The ginseng grows well

or "I am a grown up."
or "A very verbose grown up"
or "Highlights"
or "Vacation time, cancelled SA trip and misery"
or "Vacation time, traveling and joy"

So I've been reading through my blog entries and it's long... it's so much! I'm so long winded, I mean I wouldn't go so far as to say boring, but I do circle the point a bit before I make it, oh my word I'm doing it now! The point is; Long entries are tedious to read I will write shorter entries! There, I said it! Sjoe, that was hard. Surprisingly hard, I used to think I was fairly concise. I know I talk a lot but I assumed that every sentence had meaning, every word was important to the story, I never considered I talked so much just because I didn't know how to be concise. Is this post point blabber... am I still ranting on about my point long after I made it? Oh my word I have a disease... a talking disease, verbosiculosis. I really hope that's not a real disease, and that I haven't offended anyone, I was just adding "culosis" onto the back of verbose in the time honored tradition on naming diseases. I'd google it but one of the symptoms of my disease is that I'm not very thorough. How very unfortunate.

I live in a very rural part of Korea. You wouldn't believe it if you were here but in comparison to Daejeon, Buyeo is tiny. Seoul still blows my mind. I don't even have words to explain how big Seoul is. Korea is just so densely populated that when they say rural it still means town or little city. It doesn't mean large gaps between you and your neighbors or no electricity, even in my little rural town there are many places between the rice paddies with high speed free wifi. Yay for coffee shop blogging and Boo for never being as productive as I'd like. Any hoo, one thing I have that those pesky city dwellers don't have is fields and fields of ginseng farms, rice paddies and red pepper plantations. Other stuff too but I don't see them on my way to school. Since I've been here for a year I have seen every stage of the lifecycle of rice. It's prettier than you think. It's like what you imagine grass to look like if you haven't seen it for a while...bright green and soft even though it looks spiky. Real grass is a bit of a let down in comparison. Luckily there is not much real grass around for people to compare to because every piece of land that is not farm is developed with buildings and what not. there is some grass, on dedicated grass places. But not just random bits of grass like we have all long the N2 and in between houses and just growing wildly. Everything that's not developed is farmland. It's not unusual to see farm land right next to a massive highway, and seeds or peppers being dried out on the side of the highway.

An image illustrating my attempts at
delaying the ageing process

Behind my school there is a ginseng field. Buyeo produces quite a lot of ginseng and we are home to ginseng headquarters which I go past everyday on my way to school. Apart from being the capital city of the great Baekje dynasty, Buyeo is most well known for it's produce. 'Goodtrae' is an international brand of fresh agri-produce which has it's head quarters and farms in Buyeo. Melons (yellow Korean melons), water melons and bell peppers are among the top items being produced in buyeo. They are slightly cheaper than other fruits stuff but they are still ridiculously expensive in comparison to SA. Come visit me and I will feed you yellow melon and you will love it.

Highlights of teaching ESL to little kids and being old.

One of my 12 year old kids told me that another kid, who was really noisy, was acting like he's 9. I suddenly felt very old.
I have mastered my stern face, I can wipe the smile off almost any childs face with just a look. Thank you Mommy.
The kids say funny things without knowing like "Teacher, he loves you. He is your lover"
The kids call curving the ball in soccer  "Banana kick"
The kids call my afro "Bomb hair"
The strict age hierarchy means I get more respect than some of the younger teaches in my school. What this means in tangible benefits I don't really know (apart from getting earlier pickings of food and stuff) but it feels awesome.
I get to live unapologetically.
There is no pressure to be cool cause old people aren't cool anyway. 

An image of me succeeding

Lastly, I won't make it home this vacation as I was hoping I would. I planned to have almost 4 weeks of vacation but that did not work out at all. I'm sure you know by now that Korean kids work very hard and Korean teachers even harder. School used to be 6 days a week, this year my province changed that and teachers are now no longer able to work on Saturdays. However, parents don't want to accept that the kids have fewer school days in the year which means that the teaching that would usually take place on Saturdays has just been added onto the end of the semester and the beginning of the second semester, drastically shortening the vacation time. Now if I took the 18 days of vacation time I am allowed I would be away from school for the entire holiday. Unfortunately at some point in the holiday there is a week of English Camp and as my school only English teacher I will have to head up the English Camp. I would still have been able to come home for two and a half weeks BUT camp happens to fall in the middle of my vacation time. with a week on the one side and a nine days on the other :-( I was devastated when I heard the news. It is just too costly to come home for only a week. With flight tickets averaging around R14k I would be paying about R2000 for every day I was in SA. I love you all but it's just not worth it. I don't earn that kind of money. Well I sort of do but I'm still paying off my student loans so I don't have that kind of money laying around.

Instead I will probably go to Thailand for a week! Be jealous! I'm so excited I almost wrote. I'M GOING TO THAILAND! WEHLA KAPELA! But I've got more restraint than that. Lets hope it all works out! Woohoo!

I love you like I love myself (or at least I try to)
Vasti